Yesterday I tried to google "can the Halifax Wanderers still make the CPL playoffs?"
So obviously what appears right at the top is the AI summary, which told me "they've already secured their #4 position and made the playoffs". I knew this wasn't true, and I guess I could have just scrolled down a bit further and found my answer but now I was curious.
So I said "that's not true, they're still #5, what I want to know is _could they still make the playoffs_"
It says they've got an upcoming game against Ottawa, and if they win their chances are good. That game has already taken place, so I correct it again and finally I get a reasonable answer.
My question is: what's the point of the AI in the search engine if it itself isn't going to use the search engine first before answering? Like, I can't wrap my head around that. The answer is on the same page as its hallucination. It could have done a cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information. It's meant to be A SEARCH ENGINE!
The AI answer dominates the page, and is usually wrong, so it's just a waste of the most valuable space on the page.
The ads have proliferated, and rarely have what I need.
Video search results also take up a lot of the page, and are almost never what I want if I haven't clicked over to the Video tab. Again, just a big waste of space.
Speaking of the Video tab its accuracy/relevancy has gotten worse too.
The organic results have deteriorated, and are still competitive, but are no longer clearly and consistently better than Duckduckgo.
So it's duckduckgo as the default for me on all devices now. If I don't find what I want, which is maybe 30% of the time, I switch over to G just by adding !g to the query. G might have what I need in about half of those cases.
You can see why a lot of people just ask an LLM to do the web searching for them.
Across the board, this is all quite bad compared to web search from 10+ years ago.
If there's a single thing which has really pushed me away from Google, it's simply google.com devoting so much of the page to things that aren't organic web search.
I started my journey on DuckDuckGo and got tired of the “30% of the time” bit that you mention, where a large section of your searches end up going back to Google anyway.
I find that Kagi is pretty much 99% “never need to use Google.” The results are just really good.
It does, but not exclusively, and it puts its special disenshittification secret sauce (which isn't that good but much better than nothing) on top.
Hugsbox · · focus · HN ↗
So obviously what appears right at the top is the AI summary, which told me "they've already secured their #4 position and made the playoffs". I knew this wasn't true, and I guess I could have just scrolled down a bit further and found my answer but now I was curious.
So I said "that's not true, they're still #5, what I want to know is _could they still make the playoffs_"
It says they've got an upcoming game against Ottawa, and if they win their chances are good. That game has already taken place, so I correct it again and finally I get a reasonable answer.
My question is: what's the point of the AI in the search engine if it itself isn't going to use the search engine first before answering? Like, I can't wrap my head around that. The answer is on the same page as its hallucination. It could have done a cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information. It's meant to be A SEARCH ENGINE!
safety1st · · focus · HN ↗
The AI answer dominates the page, and is usually wrong, so it's just a waste of the most valuable space on the page.
The ads have proliferated, and rarely have what I need.
Video search results also take up a lot of the page, and are almost never what I want if I haven't clicked over to the Video tab. Again, just a big waste of space.
Speaking of the Video tab its accuracy/relevancy has gotten worse too.
The organic results have deteriorated, and are still competitive, but are no longer clearly and consistently better than Duckduckgo.
So it's duckduckgo as the default for me on all devices now. If I don't find what I want, which is maybe 30% of the time, I switch over to G just by adding !g to the query. G might have what I need in about half of those cases.
You can see why a lot of people just ask an LLM to do the web searching for them.
Across the board, this is all quite bad compared to web search from 10+ years ago.
If there's a single thing which has really pushed me away from Google, it's simply google.com devoting so much of the page to things that aren't organic web search.
Grombobulous · · focus · HN ↗
I find that Kagi is pretty much 99% “never need to use Google.” The results are just really good.
Scoring6931 · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗